Product Photography - Bags.

This project was for a man starting an online shop selling quality bags. In order to show off his products he needed pictures of all his range consisting of 20+ bags in various angles. 

After taking all the shots needed. I used Photoshop to cut the backgrounds out of each image, I then finished off by brushing the textures up with some light editing. Here is an example of some of the images.

It's not about colour.

On Saturday night I was at Mixed Martial Arts promotion Fight UK's 'Last Man standing Tournament' 

I turned up last minute and the guys were happy to let me sit cage side to get some real pictures. As the event was being held in a theatre hall, the lighting conditions were pretty dim everywhere, and to avoid agitating fighters before they prepare for their fights, its in my best interest to keep my flash switched off.

I was also using a faster shutter speed to capture instant moments, which meant even less light was available to the camera. This meant many of my shots produced grain and in the colour versions its very noticeable, so I decided to make a collection of black and white images.

I played with the black and white setting levels combined with brightness/contrasts. I also added a high pass layer, but instead of using small increments for more realistic sharpening, I used higher levels to achieve a  more canvass effect.

My focus was to try and capture fighters 'in the moment'. 

Check out www.fightukmma.co.uk for future shows!

Cutting Rugs

Some shots from a birthday bash at bar Sumo in Leicester. With break-dancers being a part of the entertainment it was a good chance for me to experiment with some dynamic shots.

Taking pictures in low light settings like these, I use my flash to brighten up the shot as you would, however using the flash can cause loss of detail. 

To counter this, I added a 'High Pass' layer in Photoshop, this allows me to bring back some details lost as a result of the flash. 

I then cropped my images where necessary to give better composition. For these images I wanted to bring out the richest colours to achieve that 'out on the town feel'.

As usual, here are some before and afters.

Wax On, Wax Off.

On the weekend I was at 'Seasonal Self Drive' a van hire company based in Leicester.

The client required images for use in various areas of their website. As can be expected with vans in the rental business, especially older ones, wear and tear is inevitable, for the purpose of a website you obviously want your vans looking brand spanking or as close to.

So, one by one go, I through the images in Photoshop removing: rust, dust, scrapes, minor dents, water marks etc. before playing about with colour levels to finish my images.

Here are some before and afters.

You can find Seasonal Self Drive's Facebook page here: www.facebook.com/SeasonalSelfDrive

It's hot in here...

Last night I went to get some fresh snaps for an events entertainment team known as 'Champion Sounds'.

While editing through the images I came across this one, not a bad picture but our subject in the middle has some sweat patches, although it shows they're working hard, these photos are going on their website so we want to look.... less sweaty? 

To remove these stains, as in my previous post I used a combination of the clone stamp tool and the healing tool, I am using other areas of the t-shirt matching up the blue tones. 

Being careful not to lose too much on the creases, I clone away the pit area replacing it with other areas of the t-shirt that are unaffected, working at 100% scale, cloning over small areas at a time, zooming in and out to check for consistency in tone and texture. 

Some areas still appear blurry, for these areas I use combination of the healing tool and the sharpen tool to bring back some of the texture. 

I noticed some dust/fluff on the guys hair, I used same method to remove them.

For this image I went for a high contrast look.

Check out www.championsounds.net for all your live entertainment needs!